WHO mulls untested Ebola drugs

Health experts honed in today on a handful of unproven drugs they hope might turn the lethal tide of Ebola, as key figures urged that funds go for frontline crisis care in some of the world's poorest states.
On the second and last day of talks in Geneva, the World Health Organisation-led group discussed fast-tracking two potential vaccines and eight potential therapies, including the drug ZMapp that has been used on a handful of frontline workers.
With no fully tested treatments for Ebola, the WHO has endorsed rushing out potential cures like ZMapp -- a call echoed by African doctors battling the epidemic that has taken some 1,900 lives so far.

"Everybody keeps asking why isn't this medication made available to our people out there?" Samuel Kargbo, from Sierra Leone's ministry of health, told AFP.
The WHO said "extraordinary measures" were in place to accelerate the pace of clinical trials -- but admitted that even that would likely not allow "widespread use before the end of 2014".
Abdulsalami Nasidi, project director at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, nevertheless said the Geneva discussion "gives a lot of hope to the African people affected and those who are in panic".
ZMapp has been given to about 10 infected health workers, including Americans and Europeans, of whom three have recovered.

Current stocks are exhausted, but the WHO said a few hundred doses could potentially be ready by the end of the year.